and later, transportation secretary elaine chao talks about infrastructure investment at the national governors association's winter meeting in washington, d.c. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," wall street journal columnist alexandra wolfe discusses her book "valley of the gods," a silicon valley story. brian: alexandra wolfe, what is the "valley of the gods"? alexandra: it is a book about three fellows who won peter thiel's thiel fellowship. it looks through the eyes of these three kids and shows the

cultural anthropology of silicon valley right now. hopefully a few other alternatives to going to college. brian: why did you do this? alexandra: to begin with, i have always grown up in new york -- always lived in new york. i went to silicon valley for the first time a couple of years ago and i was so amazed by what i saw. i was so refreshed by the optimism. in reading the papers, they are changing every industry. being there, i found way more than i ever thought i would see on the east coast. it was so different. brian: you lead off with the author's note. the first thing you said is you first met peter thiel, cofounder of paypal and first investor in facebook, in new york at a salon in his house in 2006. go back to the salon. who is peter thiel and why were you there?

alexandra: i met him through some friends of my parents. at that point in new york, nobody really knew who he was. he was really famous on the west coast for founding paypal and had been the first investor in facebook. but facebook was not the behemoth it was today. it was big, but was not billions -- the size it is now. i go to the salon, and these friends say you might find them interesting. i got there, and he had people presenting, and they all were saying things completely counterintuitive. if they said it out loud at their job, they would have gotten fired. it was all these politically incorrect things or contrarian ideas they would present. it was really the only forum where they could do it. i thought, this is so fascinating that this guy knew all these people saying things which at the time sounded crazy. some of them turned out to be right. he was talking about -- he predicted the real estate

bubble. back in 2006, he was saying this is going to crash. everybody is saying, my apartment has appreciated by millions of dollars, what are you talking about? but his predictions came true. it was really interesting. brian: new york is where you grew up. where did you go to college? alexandra: duke. brian: why? alexandra: my father's family is from down there, so i was comfortable. it was also totally different than the new england ivy league schools. i applied early, and i just thought it was fun to be in a different part of the country. brian: if you look closely, our audience can pick out a face that looks familiar when you talk about your father. who is your father? alexandra: his name is tom wolfe, and he wears a white suit. he wrote "the right stuff," and what else? "the electric kool-aid acid test." brian: speaking of that, i want

to show you a video of ken kesey. you mention him in your book, and i get a sense that what you found in silicon valley has some connection with this. let's watch a little bit. [video clip] ♪ >> would you repeat that again? >> we weren't old enough to be beatniks and were too old to be hippies. we decided to travel across the country and buy a bus. it was like a troop of minstrels. >> cassity is going to drive the bus. >> it looked like a traveling pleasure palace, big, roomy, and

spacious, until we got all the people in it. >> it was almost impossible for him to ever shut off. >> all you can do is experience this thing. >> ken really believe that things could be changed. >> people did not think we were hippies or drug freaks. >> the public cringed when they saw that bus. >> we are the merry band of pranksters. ♪ >> once pandora's box is open, you can't regulate who uses the stuff that flies out of it. i thought this was as american as you could get because we were exploring a new territory.

brian: that was from a documentary. a lot of things i want to ask you about. first, when did you read your father's book, "the electric kool-aid acid test"? alexandra: a couple of years ago, and it was strangely relevant to this book. this book was originally supposed to be a bus trip that was the reverse of "the electric kool-aid acid test." peter thiel and the foundation that works for him, they are going to rent out the opposite of ken kesey's 1939 schoolbus and outfitted to be this high-tech dorm. they went to tennessee and found justin bieber's old tour bus. there are going to have a decorated with computers and electronics. they ended up canceling the bus trip two weeks before. but it was completely based on that. brian: were you going to go? alexandra: yeah, it was going to be a month, we are going to stop

at colleges along the way, from new york to palo alto. it was supposed to be a rejection of all the things that institutions on the east coast had done. timothy leary from ken kesey's circle became a professor, and then this new version of the bus was going to take the kids away from the professors that were, you know -- said things that they disagree with. brian: what would, in your opinion, be the difference in the politics of the ken kesey crowd versus the crowd you got to know? alexandra: in a weird way, they would not be that different. if you were to say ken kesey -- a lot of the people i met out there were libertarians. in a strange way, it was not all that different. the behavior was definitely different, a completely different kind of drug.

the drug was massive internet success versus acid. but a lot of the similarity -- i asked my father, i told him i was writing this book. he said, oh yeah, i wrote about that in 1983. it was a story about robert noyce, one of the intel founders. a lot of the things were so similar, the way everybody dressed, the living communes. i thought, dad, you scooped me. he did in a lot of ways. that story in particular, he wrote about that first, that people did not wear neckties, everything was really casual. brian: when you were hanging around them, did you wear a hoodie? alexandra: i have a lot more now than i did in 2011. brian: what is the ability business? alexandra: i think it is an imitation of mark zuckerberg. a lot of entrepreneurs go out there and want to be a founder

of the company. they think that venture capitalists will fund them if they look like successful entrepreneurs. i feel like weirdly mark zuckerberg started this whole fashion craze. no one would ever accuse him of being particularly fashionable, but now everybody has a hoodie. my father told me he went to interview someone about hedge funds and digital technology, and he said that one of these companies was saying one of the wall street bankers came out there, i think they were going to try to undo the ipo of one of the big tech companies, and he came in -- 75 years old, came in wearing a hoodie and sneakers. everybody just laughed because they see him in his suit all the time and he is an investment banker. it seems to have spread. if i went into a company out

there looking like this, they would think i was going to a prom. nobody wears a dress or skirts. brian: here is your father when he was here. this was one of the most memorable moments. he won't like this, but maybe you will. [video clip] >> he wears white suits. it took the place of a personality for many years. >> how many of them do you have? >> i used to have a lot, about 22 now. i can get by with that. >> how long can you wear them without having to have them cleaned? >> about six hours. to go on a trip and make people think you have one, you have to have three. i have three suits i brought along to come here, all made of the same material. you can't really tell the difference.

but it really -- it simply has not hurt to have a trademark. alexandra: [laughter] that's really funny. if i could come up with the equivalent of a white suit -- i haven't asked him. i am used asking questions, i don't answer them. i asked my dad, how do you answer questions? he said, i wear a suit, i don't have to. i said, i can't really wear white suit, i guess. he said, you'll be fine. brian: everybody knows about the white suit, the fact that was interesting was 22 of them. does he wear them around the house in new york? alexandra: for sure. he has some variations, a really nice smoking jacket sometimes you will put on over. if he goes to the doctor, shopping, he will put on a white suit. he does not wear white to the

gym, he wears navy. he is pretty inventive. brian: go back to the west coast. one of the things i picked up in your book is there is a huge difference between the east coast and west coast. i am from the midwest, you left out the rest of the country. what is the difference between east and west? alexandra: the biggest difference is in the status system. on the east coast, it is vertical, a hierarchy. you pay your dues and get to the next level, traditionally speaking. on the west coast, it is more horizontal. to get in with the group are these networks, and so you sort of laterally move into a certain network. that does not really matter how old you are, you could be old or young or anything, you just have to be sort of connected and have the same status values in a way.

for example, in the book, a lot of these kids who went out to try to be the gods of silicon valley, like elon musk or peter thiel, would copy their idiosyncrasies instead of their brilliance, because that was much harder. they would take on interests in living forever or becoming paleo or the seasteading institute, the libertarian colonies in the ocean. it was sort of by interest that people grouped together. in new york, it was like you go to this kind of college, get this kind of job, climb the ladder. that was a big distinction that i saw. brian: what does it mean, going paleo? alexandra: you can't have any refined carbs, no sugar, everything natural, things that

a cave man would have eaten. brian: you talked about milton friedman. we have got some video to show. the first thing folks are going to see is the grandfather, his son, and his son, you write about. [video clip] >> whenever you have an improvement in ordinary people, it improves society. and yet everybody is extending socialism. >> i think one should have a society without government. in the short run, there are some things government does it should stop doing tomorrow and some that will take some years to replace. >> we have talked about the nature of the ocean today. it is a unique place. it is a dynamic medium that mixes things, allows movement. that makes it perfect for societal evolution. brian: why is the grandson of milton friedman in your book? alexandra: because peter thiel funded these islands that he

wanted to build in the ocean, the seasteading institute. i think it is 12 miles away from shore, you are outside u.s. jurisdiction the idea was to have floating islands, where you could create your own government. they had all these models and each one cost $500,000. peter thiel gave him a $500,000 -- i don't know if it was an investment -- but gave him $500,000 because it was such a unique idea. that is how patrick friedman met peter thiel, then he helped out with the fellowship that the main characters in the book were part of. he helped look at the applications, and he was there at the beginning, mentoring some

of them. brian: what would be the difference between patrick friedman and his grandfather in lifestyle? alexandra: patrick friedman used to have this polyamorous lifestyle. he lived in a commune in mountain view, and now he is monogamous and engaged to a nice woman and they have one relationship. before, he had a coparent and they had roommates and they all lived as one big happy family. he also -- patrick also is much less establishment, clearly, then his grandfather. his ideas were really out-of-the-box. they were less pure economics and more just -- to me, i had never heard anything like it before. i just thought his point of view was really refreshing and new. he is such an odd character. the first time i met him was on a cruise shop with entrepreneurs

and he is wearing a burger king crown. he just looks like somebody from a different planet. he made for a good character. brian: and what would his politics be and how much would he agree or disagree with his grandfather? alexandra: in a way, there is a thread that unites them. he is extremely libertarian. i think he actually has deals to work with countries to start entirely new governments. he and his friend james hogan worked on this experimental version of seasteading institute called summer isle. there was a lake and everybody would bring rafts and experiment with government styles. i can't imagine that milton friedman did that. he seemed like he tried these

things and lives this way, which was interesting to write about. brian: you work at the wall street journal. how often do you write where people can see what you do? alexandra: twice a week. i have one column about art and another one that is a profile of a different person every week, weekend confidential. brian: that is in the arts section? alexandra: the review, the weekend section. brian: you did a profile recently on your father. what was that like? alexandra: so intimidating. i wanted to try to do it justice and to do it in his own style, which was even harder. i put all these expectations on myself, but my father is so agreeable, so he made it better. i started out an early draft going, dad, because he starts out his articles with exclamation points. i also -- he had just written a book that i think was pretty controversial.

he was very accessible, so that was helpful in getting the interview. brian: what was the impact both your father and mother had on you? and you have a brother. what is he like and what does he do? alexandra: a great artist, he makes furniture and sculptures and makes jewelry and things like that. he lives in brooklyn with his wife. he and my father are probably -- and my mother -- are the most moral people. they are very principled. there is no gray area. there is right and wrong, and i always respected that. brian: he has gone over the years into some strange environments. have you? alexandra: the other thing about that is that when he goes into these strange environments, he looks even stranger because he does not try to adapt to them. i always thought that was interesting. i asked him when he was working on "the electric kool-aid acid

test," what he wore. he said, i were a suit and tie and carried a notebook. i think that is what he has done for every single book. just in life, he has never tried to fit in. i like going into situations that are uncomfortable reporting, but i always think about him, because i have that human reaction of thinking, do i fit in? what are they going to think? he reminds me, you don't have to fit in, you are a fly on the wall. who cares what they think? there have been so many reporting trips i have gone on where i don't feel like i fit in. one i remember, i went to malawi with a gucci fashion group and felt so out of place. i remembered my father's advice, you don't have to dress like you

are in the gucci pr department, you are writing about them. that has really been helpful. even about silicon valley, my father was out there reporting. he was staying near a hotel in stanford. he does not try to look like a professor, even, so he is wearing this nice suit and has a tie on. he said he was leaving his hotel restaurant and somebody stopped him and tried to give him a tip because they thought he was a waiter. he just gets a kick out of it. it is sort of -- i definitely try to think about that if i am reporting somewhere. brian: did you read "i am charlotte simmons"? alexandra: i did, and i had a t-shirt that said i am not charlotte simmons. everyone said it is so much like duke, so much like your life. the plot was not my life. some of her characteristics, i could understand. yes, i have my t-shirt. brian: does he talk to you about that book before it comes out? alexandra: yeah, we did talk

about it, because i was in college. he talked to my brother and i. he came to chapel hill to do some of the reporting. i refused to let him come to duke. i remember calling him for breakfast, saying, are you ready? he said, i am so tired, i was at a frat party until 3:00 a.m., could we do it later? so i did hear a lot about it. i had the same boyfriend all through college, and in this book the woman dates 20 people or something. i feel like i always have to have this disclaimer, i am not charlotte simmons. it was fun hearing my father's take on all these people. he gave our graduation talk, and it became part of this essay he wrote "hooking up," and it was so embarrassing, in front of my entire college class. he said, the whole courtship rituals have changed completely.

you meet somebody, your eyes lock, lips lock, hips lock, and next morning you say, what is your name? everybody in the room looked at me, like, what did you tell him? brian: back to this book. there was a quote that i wanted to read back to you from a man named john burnham. it is relevant to what we do in this town. he says, "take democracy, for one. why, he wondered, did everyone believe in it so blindly? instead government was oligarchy. he had borrowed this idea from a blog and looked for the same concept in plato." did they really believe democracy is a bad idea? alexandra: some of them do.

john burnham was the most precocious boy i had ever met. he had read everything. he was so badly behaved because he was so ahead of the game. the school reading was so boring to him that he read blogs and philosophy all day. he did not get involved in politics, but he was so interested in those ideas. he applied to the fellowship with that idea. brian: we have to stop and talk about peter thiel for a moment and the fellowship before i show you john burnham. who is peter thiel today and how does he factor in? you say you met him 10 years ago in a salon. alexandra: the lens i view him through in this book is the fellowship to convince students to drop out of college. today, he has gotten attention

lately for supporting trump. he is an investor and he still makes a lot of -- he was a partner at founders fund, a venture capital firm. he is known as the godfather of the paypal mafia, these people he worked with and have gone on to create huge companies, such as yelp. brian: how old is he? alexandra: late 40's. probably worth about $2 billion. brian: let's watch a little bit of peter thiel. [video clip] >> i have been a big critic of the u.s. education system, focusing on higher education, over a trillion dollars of student debt. i think we have a bubble in higher education. i do not think it is helping people do more entrepreneurial or risk-taking things. when you graduate from college with $100,000 of debt, you will take a safe, well-paying job to pay off your debt and you will be less likely to do something entrepreneurial or creative or

artistic, which may pay less but ultimately create more value. brian: when did he create this fellowship, how many involved, how old are they, the story behind the thiel fellows? alexandra: he started in 2010 and announced at techcrunch. at first he thought it would be another contrarian idea, but it weirdly caught on. so many people seem to agree because of what he mentioned with the over $1 trillion of student debt. he thought of college as a four-year vacation where you don't learn that much, if you are not motivated. the first year, he made this announcement that he was looking for 20 kids under age 20 to start new, different companies out west and drop out. 400 people applied. it is still going on, and now 5000 people apply every year.

they get $100,000. i guess now they get a lot more mentorship, and they have meetings every week with the leadership of the program. brian: where can they live? alexandra: they don't provide housing, so it is really hard. they have to find housing and come up with an idea themselves and get it funded. the thiel foundation does not give them any money other than the $100,000. that stretches over two years, so it is not that easy to do. brian: do they have to live in silicon valley? alexandra: that is the preference. some don't. they don't have to, but they encourage them. brian: where is silicon valley? alexandra: south of san francisco.

it encompasses a pretty big area. most of the fellows lived in palo alto and around stanford. brian: san jose, palo alto, those places. what is located in there? how many of those companies did you come in contact with? what is all there? alexandra: some of the biggest tech companies i saw, facebook, google, apple. brian: is paypal there? alexandra: i think it is. i should double check that. it is so funny, i barely even put paypal in the book because peter thiel founded it so long ago and sold it to ebay. that is one of the things that seemed like a simple idea that was so hard. a lot of these kids look at these huge ideas, twitter, uber, airbnb, and they seem almost like a seinfeld episode. if only we had this, then this could happen. they felt like, i could do this like this, and it was so much harder. the work required was so surprising to me.

a lot of them felt like -- it felt like the rush of hollywood actresses to l.a., and they end up being a waitress and wait for their big day. i feel like it is harder to be elon musk than tom cruise. so many of these companies, instagram, uber, the people running them did not just have a lucky break, it was years of coding and engineering. they have qualifications i can't even imagine. when they are covered in the press, they have exploded. it caused people to come out there, assuming it would happen, and they were disappointed. brian: there is a group of the first fellows in 2011. it is only 45 seconds. [video clip] >> my proposal is to cure aging. >> i want to keep information open and free. >> to make learning games for

young children between seven and 13. >> rotating a solar panel to optimize. >> the ability that will allow disabled users to go everywhere able-bodied human can. >> make it easier for everyday people who like music to go to live events. >> make the energy of the future for under $.25 a gallon from waste products. >> our goal is to make solar energy cheaper than coal. >> my project is on an electric motor for electric vehicles. >> i am applying to pursue asteroid mining. brian: john burnham there, asteroid mining. how old was he? alexandra: you have to be under 20, i guess he was 19. brian: what are the rules about college? alexandra: you had to -- you could stop out, you could go back after two years, but you

had to drop out for those two years. one of them started at wake forest for a year -- for a semester, and then dropped out, but it cost him, his teammates started without him and he was left starting his own company. ideally they had to completely dropout, then 10% went back to college. a lot of them don't. brian: do this start companies? alexandra: they all started companies. some of them worked for existing companies, but they all came up with an idea and tried to make it work. john burnham, he did not end up starting an asteroid mining company, but he started a company that would try to make online payments in gold. that did not work out. he went back to dartmouth and is still there.

a lot of them stayed out there. brian: you say he went from asteroid mining to religion? alexandra: he went -- he had so many back and forths, his story was so interesting because the ups and downs were colossal. after that did not work out, he went to dartmouth and came up with a new idea. he posted it on a blog, it was picked up and became so promising that he moved back to california. then he became disenchanted with that life, so he went to thomas moore, a tiny religious school in new england, and he studied religion. he became really into religion. he dropped out of that school and has transferred to dartmouth. brian: when did you start on this project, your first book? alexandra: i started the reporting in 2010, and over the next 2, 3 years was out there half the time. brian: how did you do it, become a part of their lives? alexandra: i interviewed more than 100 people. i had known peter thiel and met

some people who he worked with at the foundation who ran the fellowship. i went to those final rounds and started meeting the fellows and was so interested in the idea of education and what needs to be done about higher education. that was such an interesting window, because even the parents' reaction was so interesting. when i was growing up, if you did not go to college, there was something wrong with you. whereas now, the parents of these kids, it was the first time i heard them be proud of their kids not going to college. it was this alternative to actually having to take this track. i like the idea of not having to go down that road. if i had -- if i were applying now to college, maybe i would try and think of something different. i don't know if i would start a company, but it did make me

question other ideas instead of just having to do these four years of higher education. brian: what was it like growing up in the tom wolfe home? what was your mom like? she is still here, but what was her interests? alexandra: she used to be a graphic designer -- i guess she still is, but she worked at a magazine for a long time. my father -- i remember many things, but in terms of his work, he was on his typewriter all the time, so i heard the sound growing up. he still uses a typewriter. my mother, she has helped my father a lot with his books. she reads all of his drafts and has read all of mine. editorial parents. brian: would you have been a writer if it had not been for the family grew up in? alexandra: i don't think i would have been.

i always liked english and writing, but i watched -- it was fascinating to me when i saw my father's personality. he is so polite, i have never heard him curse. and then i read bonfire of the vanities and was like, dad, you used the f word. i could not believe that someone of his comportment could get in the mind of these characters who were so different than him. that was so interesting, that you could be so different on the page than in person. brian: and charlotte simmons is full of language. alexandra: it really was. how do you know about those things, dad? but yeah, that was funny. i interned at this freebie magazine in long island, i think because they were short staffed. i wrote this restaurant review and they printed it as is.

i was reading the agony and ecstasy for summer reading, so i started it saying, as in the agony and ecstasy, chef michael smith puts his pepperoni on his pizza. i thought it was so amazing and they published it, so i got a falsely inflated view of my own writing expertise. they subsequently ran an actual review of the restaurant. it helped working for places that were understaffed and did not edit you. that was my first writing job at 15. brian: where else have you worked before wall street journal? alexandra: the new york observer right out of college, which was so much fun. i think if you had a good idea, they would hire a bum off the street. there was no bureaucracy and you felt like you were at the zeitgeist of new york. brian: it ended up being owned by jared kushner. alexandra: i was there well

before him. then the wall street journal, then conde nast portfolio, vanity fair little bit. then i joined the wall street journal three or four years ago. brian: you wrote about james comey. alexandra: i did, that's so true. that was around the time when martha stewart was being prosecuted, the state of white-collar criminals. his office -- he was in new york, and i did this profile of him. we did not run it for a little while, so it ended up being weirdly timely. i would like to talk to him again, but i don't know if he would be as available. brian: are you surprised about what happened to him based on your interview? alexandra: he was pretty careful in my interview. he did not really give any new

-- he was pretty -- brian: i was going to read back a quote i thought might be interesting, if i can find it. alexandra: i am impressed you found this article. brian: "this criminal case is about lying -- lying to the fbi, lying to the sec, and lying to investors, he said at the june 4 press conference. that this conduct that will not be tolerated." alexandra: it's interesting now with the election. brian: was he open to talking to you back then? alexandra: last fall? brian: no, back then, could you interview him? alexandra: yeah, i remember i met with his press officer for hours before i met with him. at the time, i was 23, i think, and i did not know very much about law.

i needed an education before i met with him. i met with lawyers and interviewed tons of people. i think it took three weeks to prepare because i was so new to it. he was so friendly. everybody i interviewed about him was so positive about him. i would never have expected the fbi -- back then, it was a different time. but he was certainly getting a lot of attention for those white-collar criminals. brian: one of the women prominent in your book, laura deming. here she is. [video clip] >> sometimes people say, if i lived to be 100 or 200, i would get bored pretty quickly. i can't understand that. at m.i.t., i loved looking at things, thinking about physics, things like waves, or trees. life is mind blowingly exciting. there is no better way to remember that than to think

about what it would be like to die. i want to cure aging. i want to make us all live forever. brian: how old is laura deming now? alexandra: 22. brian: did she go to m.i.t. after she became a fellow? alexandra: no, she went at age 14. she joined a lab at uc berkeley at age 12, then m.i.t. at 14. she is fascinating to talk to because she finds biology so interesting and gets so excited. i was so impressed by her. she was so different. brian: why did she do the fellowship? alexandra: because she already had been to college, and here was this network of people,

including this guy named dr. gray who had -- his whole research is based around ending the disease of aging. peter thiel had given him $3 million to look into antiaging or curing the aging disease. he was one of her mentors. there were a lot of people in the foundation involved with the fellowship who were really interested in helping people live forever. she is really knowledgeable. she had been working with worms, trying to help them live forever, since she was 12, so was a good fit. brian: here is another person in your book, paul. [video clip] >> there is a strange fascination with people who have dropped out. something like this. i know mark zuckerberg dropped out of college and made a lot of money. i hear you dropped out of college. that must mean you are going to make a lot of money.

[laughter] >> surprisingly, i think people tend to be more positively inclined toward listening to what i am saying when i tell them i dropped out, because that is weird since that is not a reason to listen more to me. brian: what about him? alexandra: he was interesting because he started a company called upstart. it was a person-to-person lending company. it did a similar thing as the fellowship in that, if you did not want to get a high-paying job at a bank or consulting and you wanted to be an artist, you could get a loan from another person. there would be people who would fund you through this company. he had an algorithm to figure out the risk of funding a particular person. he had data points to quantify a person's character. it was such a weird thing, that you could hack a character. it was an example of people trying to hack everything,

morality, character. he was a really disciplined guy. i think he found it to be an interesting practice. brian: can you describe the difference -- maybe this is not fair, but you talk about your dad being so moral. can you describe the morality of your father versus the morality of the young kids you write about? alexandra: a really interesting question. the morality of my father versus these kids. in a way, i kind of feel like they are similar in that -- i wrote a story in high school, you had to pick somebody who swims against the tide. i wrote how my father literally

did. he always wore a two piece bathing suit to the beach. i would be like, hello, mr. wolfe. he wore a suit everywhere. some of the things he will say, he is so tickled by the fact that other people will find it crazy. i just think that is so brave. so i think -- brian: were you like that at all? alexandra: i would like to be. probably less than my father. it helps when you have more legs to stand on. once you have written a couple of best-selling books, people take you more seriously when you say crazy things. maybe that is not across the board. i guess a lot of the people in silicon valley were ok saying things that others might find immoral. my father definitely has a more traditional marriage then a lot of the people out there. brian: do they marry at all? you talk about polyamory. alexandra: it is not across the board.

i would not say polyamory is amoral. but his ways of behavior are different from theirs. another way that people in silicon valley are different from the east coast, sometimes it feels like a uniform out there, too. my father is almost morally opposed to any kind of uniform. he does not want to have to fit into anything. the behavior out there, the hoodie, for example, is to fit in. brian: did you read "bonfire of the vanities"? how much of that came true? alexandra: yes. a lot. very true. brian: let's go to another person you write about, james proud. [video clip]

>> the inspiration came from a friend trying to find tickets to a concert and it was pretty difficult. there must be an easier way. i thought about this for a week or so and there is actually something that could be built. i built it as a side project and released it one summer. it got traction. i have been doing this for fun. i take all the different dates for the live music stuff. the most rewarding part of any startup is seeing people use your product and hearing about people using something you built, and you don't even know the person. brian: what is the gig locator? alexandra: an app that helps you find concerts whenever or wherever you want to go. he is a huge success story. he and paul are probably the biggest financial successes out of the first class.

now james proud has this new sleep tracker, this little ball that is nicely designed. i think it was just named one of "time" magazine's 25 best innovations of the year. it tracks the environment where you sleep. it can detect the air quality and tell how you are sleeping. i think sports teams are using it to help their athletes. brian: what does peter thiel think of his fellowship idea at this point? he has been doing it now for 5, 6 years. alexandra: i have talked to his foundation about this. i think they would say it has been a huge success because of the increase in applications from 400 to 5000. also, the fellows, they would say the goal was not necessarily for all of them to become

billionaires, but just to stop and think, what else could i do, do i have to go to college? i kind of do think it has become a model for having a gap year. there has been a huge increase in that kind of deviation away from going to college. brian: how much of what you saw looks like what we are going to show now from hbo's silicon valley program? how much of it looks like this? alexandra: i think all of it, but i will watch. [video clip] >> i have talked to peter gregory about in sourcing a consultant. their architecture is supposed to be insane. they call him the carver. >> the guy who hacked into bank of america? >> we should get him if we can. >> ok, we can talk to the guy, but he is going to have to sell

me. >> i think that is him. >> excuse me, mr. carver? >> yeah, people refer to me as the carver, but nobody calls me that. it is what people call a screen name, you know. i am kevin. alexandra: [laughter] i feel like it is so accurate. brian: what is an incubator? alexandra: basically a training center. it breeds companies. brian: what we saw there? open space and lots of desks? alexandra: you can apply to one of these incubators. some of them, you don't have to apply. but this one will help hatch an idea, and you will have mentors and people helping you come up with something that could be

eventually worthwhile brian: what did you start to realize about the whole crowd? i also want to ask you what it was like leaving. they are clearly bright people, but leaving that environment and going back to your other world? alexandra: what i thought was so interesting was their personality, the way they behave was so different than the people i knew on the east coast in that they would have -- a lot of the people i talked to would have a huge amount of knowledge in one particular area. i have one chapter title called asperger's chic, which i mean as a complement. i was at a conference when peter thiel was asked if he thinks there is an asperger's spectrum. he said, not really, it is sort of a term that people give that

excludes -- that people from the east coast give to people they can't understand. i think he was not completely serious, but it is sort of an interesting -- people were so focused on their one idea that they were awkward talking about other things because they were not that interested. brian: they would hire somebody who stutters over somebody who doesn't, similar to what you are saying. is that really true? alexandra: they would be skeptical toward people who are really smooth and great at a cocktail party, because that is not their job. their job would be to code or come up with some crazy idea. brian: what is the business about failing? it is a positive accomplishment if you fail? alexandra: failing is the currency. on the east coast, you would say, we know each other from andover. there, they would say, we know

each other from failing at our first company. they call it pivoting, completely and utterly failing. there are all these nice ways of saying fail. it also seems like a resume builder. now, it is a bit of a cliche how great it is to fail. i have failed many times and i don't think it is that fun. it goes to the glorification of eating only ramen and living out of your car, which is not glamorous. i interviewed people who try this, and after a few months it is not fun. it does seem in general a good thing to feel like you are not going to be cast out for failing. brian: correct me if i am wrong, but it appears to me there are not many people of color in this business. there are asians, not many hispanics, african-americans. what did you find?

alexandra: the same thing. for my column, i interviewed an entrepreneur who came up with a double shaving system. he has a foundation that helps support minorities and african-americans and underrepresented groups. i asked him that question. i could not really figure it out. his answer was that a lot -- it starts in colleges, you don't see as many african-americans in computer science classes. also just more encouragement, awareness, that he was trying to help. he had a program during the summer where he would bring african-americans to work and let them know.

brian: i'm going to show you a clip of megyn kelly, somewhat out of context but i picked this up because i kept wanting to ask you about the attitude of today's society. you grew up in the last 20 years. she is talking about the way she treats her children and about the idea that everybody gets a trophy. [video clip] >> you are bringing up your kids with the same values of not everyone is a winner. >> i have already thrown away my son's participation trophy, right in the garbage. i'm sorry, i did. i went to my daughter's school for a parent-teacher conference. she was like, what is your core message? i said, you are not special. the teacher is like, what the hell? brian: these are special people

out there if you listen to them. did they feel special, and is that a good thing to tell each other? alexandra: in a way, a lot of people tend to have the confidence and lack of awareness or humility to follow through with one of these big ideas. it is not a bad thing to feel special. if you thought you are average, it is hard to come up with a crazy new idea. it is funny, i had a book idea at one time to write a book called american coddle about how kids get too much positive reinforcement. it kind of does lead to these huge expectations and dramatic failures. a lot of the kids experience that. it helps get them there, the feeling of being special, literally and figuratively, because they were chosen for

that, but once they got there and did not have this huge success, a couple of them felt really isolated and wanted to go back. they were confused as to why this had not happened yet. one or two got really depressed. they are doing fine now, one that i am thinking of went back to college. brian: were you coddled? alexandra: for sure, but i would not have it any other way. [laughter] i can't really complain. brian: what did your dad say about your book? did he criticize it at all? alexandra: he is very biased, so i think he liked it. he was really helpful in that i had him read it and he would say, put in dialogue whenever a passage got boring. he would say, create a scene, or you really need to tell the story of what these people are like and what they wear. he has always been helpful in

reminding me to write details. he has this tactic that he is way better at than i am about getting into a character's head. when he reads a book and describes, this character is thinking this, he would not say that, but it is through the eyes of another character. i had to keep going back and saying, did you think this at this moment? do you remember what you did think? that was three years ago. my father is conscientious in his notetaking. he is so observant of every interview and scene. that helped. brian: you can find our guest in the wall street journal twice a week. this is her first book. she is a resident of new york city. the name of the book is "valley of the gods." thank you, alexandra wolfe. alexandra: thank you very much.

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments, visit us at q&a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. announcer: if you liked this "q&a" program, here are some others you may enjoy. author andrew keen discussing his book. there is also mike daisey, who talks about his many monologues, including one on apple and

america's love for technology. and an author who writes about the creation of google and its impact about how information is consumed and shared. you can find those interviews online at c-span.org. >> ro khanna represents silicon valley, and monday night on "the communicators," he will describe the issues that matter most to the region's tech companies, their frustrations with washington, and his goal to create more jobs through the companies in his district, which include apple, google, and tesla, among others. he is interviewed by a technology reporter, david mccabe. >> we have to figure out what the credentials will look like for the jobs that are available. not everything will require a four-year degree. i am not as concerned about the folks getting four-year degrees or phd's.

the what are you doing after high school that will give you the credentials that will get you a job? i think the federal government should be looking to credentials employment, and having conversations with the private sector, watch the communicators at 8:00 on c-span 2. coming up next, prime minister's questions at the british house of commons. about chao talks infrastructure investment at the national governors association which are meeting in washington, d.c. later, another discussion at that same event on ending childhood hunger. during question time this past week, british prime minister theresa may was asked several questions about the uk's national health